This is a reminder to witness science, engineering, and technology coming together to extend humanity’s reach into space once more this Sunday at 10:31PM PST. The Curiosity rover will hopefully make a safe landing on the surface of Mars at that time. The various live feeds available to the public can be found here. Be a witness to history!
I’m getting a lot of extra traffic on this blog now and it’s because of the Olympics. Eight years ago, I wrote this post and now tons of dudes are finding it by Googling “volleyball ass” or some variation thereof. I can only assume the traffic will die off once the Games end in London. Hopefully it will pick up again in four years once things get underway in Rio!
In related news, here’s a funny article about the coverage of beach volleyball in London.
I wasn’t planning on buying a Blu-ray player today but chance intervened on my lunch break. I was near the Sears store downtown when their “closing out” sales signs finally got the better of me. I headed immediately to the electronics department downstairs and looked for their Blu-ray players. Even with the discounts most of them were still fairly expensive. I then happened upon a Toshiba player (with genuine Toshiba guts) with a considerable discount.
The BDX2155 was discounted to $63 from a MSRP of $95. That was good enough for me so I grabbed one of the last two boxes in the store. I immediately could tell this was definitely not like my previous player. The box was much smaller than the one my previous player was packaged in and it was also much lighter.
When I got it home I noticed the manufacture date of the player was September of 2011. My old player was made sometime in early 2009. I was curious to see what three years of progress would yield. For starters, the new player was indeed much smaller. By volume, it looked to be about 40% of the my old player. It was light as a feather and even just gingerly pushing the buttons on the front panel could cause it to slide on my shelf. Performance-wise, this is where it really shined. It played discs much faster than my player. Before, I’d have to sit there and wait for up to minute or beyond before I’d even see the menu. This new player booted up discs in about ten seconds. It also rewinds and fast-forwards much more responsively too. It’s also quieter. My old player used to whine and groan as it played but this new one is whisper quiet. Impressively, it stays cool to the touch even after an hour or more of use. My old player used to get super hot, so much so that you could feel the heat radiating off the top of it with your fingers still inches from the surface. Lastly, the player has YouTube, Netflix, and Picassa applications pre-installed on it so you can use those services on the player itself.
A good purchase for sure!